


dig up the bones

by ZephyrEden



Series: Vanishing Point [3]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Body Horror, Flowers, Gen, Nightmares, Psychological Horror, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 21:41:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15649476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZephyrEden/pseuds/ZephyrEden
Summary: [companion piece to chapter 8]He'd let them shuck the light from his skin, his body an offering to the feasting flora. He's come to be slaughtered. He'd do anything for them.





	dig up the bones

He’s running. He doesn’t know where he is or what he’s running from, but he’s running from it as fast as he can. The trees he passes are unfamiliar, their trunks thin and branches spindly, stretching towards him like knobby fingers reaching to sink their claws into the meat of his flesh.

His hat flaps against his cheeks as he moves and every brush of wool against his face feels like a thousand needles kissing his skin. He scratches at it. He pulls his hand away and can feel the way his fingers have changed the molding of his face, deep grooves pulling through it like wet clay.

A twig snaps beneath his boot and he feels it echo in his own bones, his legs bending where they shouldn’t, and he starts to topple as he sprints. He doesn’t stop running.

He’s running towards something. He needs to reach it. He needs to reach it soon.

The snow laps at his waist like he’s running through a swamp, viscous and slowing him like tar and molasses. Moss floats on the surface like algae, clinging to his limbs and tying into tight knots to hold him in place.

There’s a clearing up ahead. He needs to reach it.

“Sora, you need to get out of here!”

The voice pierces through him physically and he can feel his heart struggle as it tries to pump past the pain and the clots. It gurgles and sputters through the thick plasma, a machine in need of repair.

Sora trembles where he stands until his legs give out, his knees sinking deep into the rotting leaves and dirt. “Ri-Riku…” he whispers, his voice so quiet he can’t even hear the words he speaks. He’s not even sure if his lips moved.

He looks at the center of the pristine clearing where Riku is, the snow dusted space sterile and white. His eyes trace the ribbons of thorns sunk deep into his flesh, twisting around his arms and face and torso. They pierce deep enough to ooze violet, the scent of iron and rust heavy and heady in the midnight air. There’re shadows laughing as they race around his skin, his body a playground for their amusement.

Riku groans and it sounds like the word deflation, the marionette strings stretching him further until he’s strung up like some sacrificial crucifix, a winter god paid tribute on the solstice. His skin is made of bruises and moonlight and he bleeds wine for some sick fool of divinity to feast on.

There’s a hot flash of molten burning in the back of his throat and Sora knows he’s going to be sick.

Shadows creep along the ground, their open mouths ready to tear into the fool that dares to worship on his knees at such a ritual.

“Riku,” Sora calls, his quivering lips melting into an offering of honey, his tongue ashing to fertile soul in his mouth.

“Leave,” Riku commands with an echoing voice not entirely his own as the grey moss threads through his hair, wrapping around his face and covering one eye. His skin is made of ivory and marble and an invisible sculptor starts taking a chisel to it, shaving him down, shaping him into something new. He’s chipped away and the pieces fall away to rain down on Sora, the glittering nacre of crushed abalones littering his skin.

Sora feels it thaw through his skin like a dozen bruising kisses, a divine blessing to release him from a slaughtering he should never bear witness to.

With one eye open, Riku watches him turn to smoke, carried away by the wind. He knows what comes next.

He’s ready.

The shadows ascend and circle his head in a mockery of a crown. They move with silent laughter, a jeer he can feel buzzing through his tendons down into his marrow.

Flowers bloom in fields from his broken jaw and make a meadow of his mouth. Ivy twines around his eyes as a kindness, a blindfold so he doesn’t have to watch his body fall into a ruin of nature, a mausoleum overrun by flora.

He's ready.

He’ll join the trees here, his feet rooted in penance with arms stretched skyward, a withered body demanding reverence from those it looks down on.

He belongs to the forest now.

 

 

“And here I was under the impression that you were stronger than this.”

The sound of sound is agony against the petaled plumage of his ears, the shattering of the silence he’s been agelessly trapped in an act of violence to his pitiable form.

“Do you think you’re protecting them in here? How foolish,” the stranger’s smooth voice continues and Riku can feel the low tone rattle mercilessly in the prison of his rib cage.

Laughter that has a voice echoes about them and finds a home on the surface of his skin. _“Fo…un-d… yo…u…”_

“You can’t escape them like this,” the stranger says. “No matter where you go, they’ll find you. _He’ll_ make sure of it.”

 _“Fo-U-nD… YO…u…”_ the voice snickers and the whisper of it tickles somewhere deep inside his skull. He wonders if the thorns can penetrate it, ripping through the uncomfortable itch until there’s nothing left to scratch.

The stranger does not have sympathy for such trivial issues. “He’s screaming, you know. We all have. We all do.”

“Who are you?” Riku asks and a dusting of dried pollen leaves his lips, shriveled leaves and velvet petals brushing against his dislodged palate.

 _“Who-o… whO…O-O…”_ echoes with giggling amusement, pitch rising in hysteria.

“The one who knocks, perhaps,” the stranger answers. “Or maybe the one who opens the door. It’s unlocking. Soon it will be unlocked. But not yet. Right now, it is still locked.”

The shadows tighten around his head, a reminder of his place among them. “Who _are_ you,” Riku repeats even as bouquets fall from the bed of his collarbones, sowing seeds into his chest and lovingly taking root in his lungs.

The voice grows louder, the forest an amphitheater for its own showing. _“We-E kn-o-Ow… we…e-e kn…ow…”_ it teases, a chant of malicious delight.

“I am the one who sees. But I am not the only one. I am the one who has stolen. They are the one who steals. I am the one who will give you the key.”

_“We foU-Nd yo…U…”_

There’s too many voices. Peonies blossom from the hollow of his right cheek, bursting past the cover of moss and ivy from the sunken basin of his socket, reaching across his decaying cartilage and caressing his unhinging jaw with its tender knowing hold. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The voice does not echo. _“I kn…o-ow…”_ it whispers adoringly against the violets ringing his neck like jewels, ghosting affection as it grabs his heart in the vice of its fist.

“You wouldn’t,” the stranger says and it cuts through the voice, leaving an empty ache in cavity of Riku’s chest that he knows is not his own.

“You can’t,” it continues uninterrupted. It will not be interrupted. The ivy is snipped by something sharp and it falls away from Riku’s eyes.

“Not yet, at least.”

Riku opens his eyes.

“You will. Or perhaps you won’t. I wonder how lucky you’ll be. _We_ have not been so lucky. Not yet.”

The flesh stripped remains of a raven perch before him. Riku stares at its eyes. One remains a barren socket, an unknowable abyss held in the cavern of its skull. The other holds an eye of piercing blue that watches him. Too human to be animal. Too unnatural to be human.

“Find me where I reside. Do not be fool enough to reject my gift.”

Riku looks down with a lolling head and broken spine. His body is a garden.

He tries to lift his head. He can’t. “What does-“

His body is a garden. The stranger will not be interrupted.

“If you are,” the raven meets his eyes with a singular slit pupil, organic and unearthly, “your luck will surely run out.”

The raven is there and then it is not.

Riku’s body glistens like the snow he’s arranged on, a forgotten sacrifice left on an altar for a ritual only the full moon bears witness to.

His body is a garden.

The garden withers.

**Author's Note:**

> [shuck//purity ring](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dWIImvvSVs)
> 
> [twitter](http://twitter.com/deepseasalt_) | [tumblr](http://deepseasalt.tumblr.com) | [carrd](http://zephyreden.carrd.co)


End file.
